UK tax system - why is it so daft?

Raumarik

Raumarik

Raumarik

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I was pondering this earlier when on the radio people were moaning about family tax credits and remembered that one of my mates use to work in a call centre that handled tax credits.

Apparently there's several such call centres that do nothing but handle giving back money gathered in tax to the tax payers that bother to claim.

So essentially we're taxed, get some back and pay a couple of thousand people to handle the process - why aren't we taxed less on our pay to start with?

I'm no expert but I know there's a couple of financial wizards on the OCUK site - surely there's a better system? surely ditching the stealth taxes and avoiding these refunds/grants/rebates would save money? Having another process like this just opens up another point of failure/error where things can be miscalculated.

I honestly think that the UK public know that a majority of their gross pay goes in tax anyway, wouldn't it be nice if we could simplify it - as it looks like we're going to get more and more complex tax systems in the future, at some point the system isn't going to make sense to anyone, even those running it.

P.S. sorry in one of those hungover/ponderous moods this evening :)
 
I think the PAYE system is very good, go to the states and most people have to fill in tax returns and get rebates because they've paid too much tax, no problems here.

I think what you're complaining about isn't the tax system but the crap government policies which i very much agree with, i've got a child on the way and all the tax credit systems are driving me nuts, it really is a stupid way to do it.

If they simplified it down to 1/2 systems it would be better, i was reading an article in the paper today about it and they said to make sure you don't confuse childcare tax credits with the childcare section of working tax credits.....then you've got childcare vouchers......it really doesn't need to be that complicated but thats central gov for you.
 
Kami said:
I was pondering this earlier when on the radio people were moaning about family tax credits and remembered that one of my mates use to work in a call centre that handled tax credits.

Apparently there's several such call centres that do nothing but handle giving back money gathered in tax to the tax payers that bother to claim.

So essentially we're taxed, get some back and pay a couple of thousand people to handle the process - why aren't we taxed less on our pay to start with?

I'm no expert but I know there's a couple of financial wizards on the OCUK site - surely there's a better system? surely ditching the stealth taxes and avoiding these refunds/grants/rebates would save money? Having another process like this just opens up another point of failure/error where things can be miscalculated.

I honestly think that the UK public know that a majority of their gross pay goes in tax anyway, wouldn't it be nice if we could simplify it - as it looks like we're going to get more and more complex tax systems in the future, at some point the system isn't going to make sense to anyone, even those running it.

P.S. sorry in one of those hungover/ponderous moods this evening :)
Click to expand...

Tax credits are for the benefit of business not for the individuals benefit. Its market failure shows you the economy isnt working, not only that the government saves money by not increasing tax allowance, plus single people pay the most tax.
 
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Taxing people less would simply shift the burden from those call centres to HR/Payroll having to deal with a myriad of different tax codes (for instance, your child tax credits go down after the first year).
 
to creat jobs to keep unemployment down. Everything about tax is so complicated. It requires so many workers. If things where a lot simpler we could save huge amounts of money. But then also thousands of jobs would simply vanish.
 
Because we live in a stupid system where the demands for entitlements are considered more important than the obligations they create, where sloth is rewarded and hard work and success penalised dramatically.

There are much simpler ways to administrate and manage such a system, but this would treat everyone fairly (unpopular) and dramatically reduce the number of pointless civil servant jobs (unpopular) and because people tend to be myopic, they cannot see that reduced tax take and government spending is actually a good thing.
 
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